This paper uses the well known pre-holiday stock market anomaly to clarify the uses and limitations of the academic approach to testing for such anomalies with respect to the differing requirements of academics and investors. The approach is not designed to produce information suitable for...

This study considers the risk and return of stocks following price innovations of all sizes on UK data. The results indicate that over a long period of time it has been possible to estimate, to some extent, the expected returns and the variance of returns on a given day from the return on the...

Investors have been shown to have particular preferences when it comes to the characteristics of stock they hold in their portfolios, while prior gains and losses have been shown to impact on individuals’ economic decisions, both in an investment context and more widely. This paper is the...

The shift from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) private pension arrangements coupled with the widespread reluctance to annuitize retirement savings is causing growing economic concern in developed countries. This study considers the impact of the salient decision point made...

This paper uses investor-level data to examine jointly the tendency of investors to succumb to the disposition effect and the house money effect; two behavioral biases premised on seemingly contradictory responses to prior gains/losses. We document three novel findings. First, the two effects...

In this paper we review the literature on the short term predictability of stock prices conditional on large prior price changes. This research area is characterized by a large number of studies reflecting different markets, time periods, methodologies and model parameters. While most of the...

This paper shows that short horizon stock returns can be predicted to a much greater degree by past price movements than would be anticipated given their low autocorrelation. This raises doubts over the reliability of the autocorrelation statistic as a measure of stock market predictability.

Given the recent political landscape of the UK with the Labour Party forming a government for the first time since 1979, it is hardly surprising that the performance of the stock market under Tory and Labour governments is a topic of media and general interest. The primary purpose of this paper...